John and Carmine Lombardozzi were central figures in the corruption of the securities market on Wall Street in the late 1950s and early 1960s. With associates throughout the United States the Mafia fraud was far reaching. New York Attorney General Louis Lefkowitz began an investigation of this scandal in 1959. My e-book profiles the principal criminal figures and those who brought them to justice.

The son of a bookkeeper from Hungary, Mendy Weiss was a shipping clerk in the art industry early in his life.. By the 1930s Weiss had entered organized crime, specifically as a hired executioner for Louis Lepke Buchalter, the head of Murder, Inc. The murder for contract criminal organization carried out 60-80 killings, eliminating anyone who threatened union goods and their transport.

Terre Haute was profiled in a Life Magazine article as Sin City. The men who operated a gambling ring ran a lucrative business luring college and pro football bettors and people who gambled on baseball and the World Series. In November 1957 agents of the United States Treasury closed in on the operation and indicted many of the men involved in it. My e-book profiles the lives of the gamblers.

In 1957 Carmine Palizzano was a soft-spoken family man who had lived at the same address in Woodside, Queens for a decade. Shortly before he answered a summons for a traffic violation Carmine was arrested in a roundup of drug dealers. His brother Ralph served prison time for interstate drug trafficking earlier. Both Palizzano brothers were involved in the manufacture and distribution of narcotics.

In April 1931 Giuseppe Masseria was betrayed by one of his closest associates Lucky Luciano. Giuseppe's execution in a Coney Island restaurant was one of many events in a gang war in which the Masseria group lost 40 to 60 of its men to gun violence. My e-book looks at the murders of Masseria men, Steve Ferrigno and Al Mineo, Masseria's rise to power and his assassination by people he trusted most.

Gaetano Reina was a wealthy ice dealer who earned around one million before he was slain by an assassin with a sawed off shotgun. This era before the modern Mafia families formed is an intriguing one. Reina once worked at Columbia Wet Wash Laundry, a firm owned by Tommaso Gagliano, who was later a Lucchese family boss. Reina was once of three men implicated in the murder of a rich poultry dealer.

Albert Ackalitis spent fourteen years in Dannemora Prison before he began his rise to power on the New York waterfront. Earlier he was a charter member of the notorious Arsenal gang that pulled robberies in New York City and New Jersey. As a hiring boss on the docks he was trusted because he exerted control and knew how to get things done. Of Lithuanian descent he was born in Pennsylvania.

Frank Abbandano was a career criminal who began his unlawful life as the head of the Ocean Hill Hooligans, an East New York gang. Along with Kid Twist, Frank the Dasher became a member of Murder Inc., a criminal organization that hired thugs to murder by contract. Abbandano carried out as many as 40 murders during his stint with Murder Inc. His son, Frank Jr. was a member of the Gambino family.

Mad Sam DeStefano was a prominent figure in Chicago crime history until his death in 1973. He was rubbed out by the man he mentored, Tony the Ant Spilotro. Mad Sam was a petty criminal until he joined the Forty-Two gang in 1930. DeStefano has been compared to Chuck Nicoletti in terms of ruthlessness. Along the way Sam acquired the nicknames the Mad Hatter and Marquis de Sade of the syndicate.